


Turn Your Face Toward the Sun

by queenbaskerville



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Missing Scene, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-30
Updated: 2018-09-03
Packaged: 2019-04-30 04:23:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14488731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenbaskerville/pseuds/queenbaskerville
Summary: A solid body double is something Loki has only attempted once before, but he can do it. What other choice does he have?—The Loki and Valkyrie Road Trip of Sadness.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Don’t read this fic if you haven’t watched Infinity War. 
> 
> Kind of an au but could just as easily be canon compliant, just scenes they didn’t give us.

 

 

 

Thanos comes for the Tesseract.

It shouldn’t be a surprise. Loki should never have taken it from Asgard, should have left it there to be destroyed by Surtur— one less Infinity Stone for Thanos, it would’ve been— but he’s always been weak; he wasn’t thinking, just feeling. Just knowing the Tesseract used to call for him, though she is silent now, it was enough to make him take her away, hide her with the Casket of Ancient Winters, beg for her attention once more, when Thor’s eyes weren’t on him. When he could be inside his own head, reliving the rush of power from six years ago— almost, almost, never quite the same feeling. Never enough. 

Loki took the Tesseract, and Thanos tracked it like a bloodhound. Loki shouldn’t be surprised. Only— only, he thought he’d had more time—

The shields of the ship hold, until they don’t. The Asgardians, down to every child, fight off the disgusting wretches Thanos calls an army, until they can’t fight anymore. Thor fights Midnight Proxima and the other Children until his swords are broken and he’s pummeled into unconsciousness, and then it’s just Loki and Thanos. The Children are there, of course, Proxima wielding that annoying spear to threaten him with extreme pain should he move an inch without permission, but what _truly_ matters now are Loki and Thanos. 

He has to stall for time. The Hulk is on a different section of the ship; he’d been sent to fight off the attacks on the sickbay. Thanos’s creatures have been called off. The Hulk is on his way up; Loki’s got a magical tag on him, and he can sense his movement. The Hulk is the only being in this universe that Loki knows could fight Thanos and perhaps stand a chance of winning. At the very least, he’ll buy time for Loki to get himself and Thor the Hel out of here.

Thanos picks up Thor like he’s a child about to throw a doll across the room and drags him forward, telling Loki it’s the Tesseract or Thor’s life. 

“Kill away,” Loki says, and it’s to stall, and it’s to put up the bitter fight that Thanos will expect from him, and it’s because he’s _weak_ and doesn’t want to give up the Tesseract _ever ever ever_. 

_Thor’s dying,_ he knows, watching his brother scream in pain. His composure is harder and harder to keep. _Don’t cry, you imbecile,_ he tells himself. _Keep it together. Thor needs you. The Hulk is almost here— almost here—_ but he realizes quickly that it’s not going to be enough time. He has to give the Tesseract up, or Thor will die.

“We don’t have the Tesseract,” Thor says, and Loki wishes he could turn back time and make that true. 

The Tesseract is smooth and radiant in his hands when he calls her up, and for a moment he can almost hear her sing— but she is as silent as ever; it is only wishful thinking. Thanos crushes her cubic form like sugar glass, leaving the round stone behind, and that, that does sing. Loki’s ears ring with it, all his plans gone, terror and love swelling in his throat, eyes impossibly wide, and then the Infinity Stone is in the glove and everything is blessedly silent. 

Loki’s ears have just stopped ringing— he barely registers that Thor clearly didn’t hear anything from the stone, that Thanos is speaking— he manages to quip something, “We have a Hulk,” maybe, a memory that only he and Stark share, what a waste of a joke. He surges forward and tackles Thor out of the way as the Hulk barrels forward and smashes into Thanos. It’s a fight he doesn’t watch, only taking the half second to look to make sure the Children are watching the fight and not Loki and Thor. Loki takes Thor’s face in his hands and pours magic into his wounds. 

“Loki—”

“Shh, don’t speak.” Loki repairs as much of the mental and magical damage from the Infinity Stone as he can and closes up some of the skin damage from it, knowing Thor’s bruises and scrapes are not priority. Nothing can be done for Thor's exhaustion; Loki's not that kind of sorcerer (“Witch,” he hears in his head, Thor’s voice, fond, and Loki wishes Thor had a healing stone on him to use; Thor was always the better of the two at using those). Loki pours more magic into layering protective spells over Thor. If Thanos blows the ship up, like Loki suspects he will (it’s what he himself would do, and Thanos has his own penchant for dramatics), then Thor will be fine. Thor wouldn’t die from exposure to space anyway, but it’s good to have this backup protection, any spell at all will help now. 

“Brother,” Thor tries again, and Loki hushes him, only for Thor to shout, “Duck!” and the two throw themselves to the ground to avoid flying debris. Loki spares a glance over, and the Hulk is losing. The _Hulk_ is _losing_. He’s got to get himself and Thor off the ship and away to safety _right now_ —

—only Thor has torn himself from Loki’s hands to attack Thanos again, the _idiot_ , and Loki let’s him, mind reeling, trying to weave new priority plans, update the contingencies, prepare for all possible outcomes. By the time Thor has been restrained and the Hulk sent away by Heimdall— _his death wasn’t supposed to happen, Norns, none of this should have happened_ — Loki has something ready. 

A solid body double is something he’s only attempted once before, and it’s draining, especially after putting those protective spells on Thor. But he can do it. Thor will be furious with him for another fake death, but this is all he has to offer. He’ll “die,” Thanos will leave with the Tesseract, and then Loki will appear alive and whole again and he and Thor will track down Valkyrie, somehow, and they’ll go destroy the other Infinity Stones before Thanos can get to them. There’s at least one other on Midgard; perhaps they’ll go there first. The Grandmaster’s brother, the Collector, has the Aether, the Reality Stone— better get to the weasel before Thanos does. 

Loki knows exactly what he has to do to get Thanos and Thor to believe he’s dead. Thor underestimates his power and Thanos underestimates his intelligence— a combination of the two will get a genuine reaction from Thor and will satisfy Thanos enough to leave. Groveling with humor, a very blatant familial reference of "Odinson" to give away the game (he means it, though, he means it and it hurts), a dagger materializing in his hand because that kind of stupid move is what they’ll all expect from a stupid, desperate dog of a man— his body double lunges for Thanos’s throat, and he’s stopped just a hairsbreadth from purple flesh. Please, as if Loki would use daggers alone in a fight against _Thanos_. This isn’t some family squabble; Thanos is the Mad Titan. Loki himself is one of the most powerful sorcerers, if not _the_ most powerful sorcerer, in the universe. He’d come at Thanos with everything, because that’s what it would take just to graze him. 

Thanos suffocates Loki’s body double and clenches his fist so hard that not-Loki’s neck snaps. Thor screams behind his iron muzzle and Loki gazes at his own blue, bleeding face. Not the blue of his Jotun skin— he’s not trying to debase himself _that_ much— the blue from a lack of air. He hasn’t actually seen his own body in this state before. He’d almost died, in that fight with the Dark Elves. His heart may have stopped— it must have, if Thor had left him there. He’d thought that that was it, that he was dead, and it was with fear and pain that he gasped back to life, alone on that desolate world. And he’d gone after Odin, then, gone to see what state Asgard was in without him, only Asgard hadn’t yet known, and— it doesn’t matter now. Asgard is gone. 

In the here-and-now, Thanos is gloating, and then he’s leaving, Thor still clutching not-Loki’s broken body, and Loki prepares to reveal himself once Thanos disappears— and then ship explodes. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ve read quite a few headcanons and fics in which Loki’s relationship with the Tesseract is much like a drug addict’s relationship with his drug of choice. I tried to reflect that idea in the first few paragraphs (though recovering drug addicts are not weak; that’s Loki’s internal hatred). 
> 
> He also still has some internalized space racism against the jotuns. I don’t believe they’re as monstrous as Asgard made them out to be.


	2. Chapter 2

Loki wakes with an almost-gasp; he opens his mouth reflexively and then closes it, knowing that no air will come. It’s fine, he doesn’t need it. It would take a long, long time out here to kill him— but he’s starting to think that after the Void and after the Dark Elves, perhaps nothing will. Being adrift in space reminds him too much of the Void, and he tries not to think about it, tries not to let his stomach drop and his heart flutter. 

He starts to panic when he can’t feel the magical tag he put on Thor. All around him are the drifting dead, drifting debris, but he can’t sense Thor. The tag sense changes when the host is dead, but it doesn’t disappear entirely. That only happens if the host is out of range— and it’s impossible for the blast to have thrown Thor far enough that Loki wouldn’t be able to sense him anymore; he must have been taken by something—

_Thanos_ , Loki knows. _Thanos must’ve done something, taken Thor somewhere_ — only, Loki could have sworn that when everything exploded, Thor had been with Loki’s body double and that Thanos had left with his Children and no one else, but what ship would’ve come and found Thor since then? 

If Thanos has him, he’s being tortured, for sure. It doesn’t matter what happened, Loki decides, forcing bile down his throat at the thought of his brother being subjected to Thanos’s whims. Regardless of whether it was Thanos or some other vessel, Thor is out of Loki’s reach. If Thor is with another vessel, friendly or foe, as long as it isn’t Thanos, it may even be for the better. Thor can commandeer a ship easily, and the spell that Loki is going to have to cast to get out of here will be less dangerous and less difficult with one person to transport instead of two.

It’s a spell he’s never done before, having only read of it in his youth. He’s never done it because of how much Asgardian blood it takes to fuel the casting. Other dangers include landing in the wrong spot, going to the right spot but it doesn’t exist anymore, losing any of his limbs— and how many light years he can transport himself depends entirely on his own power. If his landing point is too far away, he may be shredded to pieces in the process of getting there— but if he survived the Void, he can survive this. He can. 

He grabs the ankle of the nearest dead Asgardian and pulls the body towards him ever so slowly. He thanks the Norns that it’s an adult, not a child, because that makes what he’s about to do easier. When the woman’s legs are close enough, he conjures a dagger and slices the vein in her thigh, letting the blood leak out to hang without gravity in front of him. He knows how much blood an Asgardian body holds; basic biology. When all of her blood has been drained and floats adrift, weightless, in the space around him, he has to make a split second decision. Try to send himself to the Grandmaster's pleasure ship, which Valkyrie had taken with Korg and Miek, or be so daring as to try to teleport directly to Valkyrie, wherever she is? Living foci are more difficult to reach than abiotic ones, the reasoning long and complicated but assuring that despite the fact that all universal placement is relative and that everything is expanding, it is far too risky for anyone to try. But he's not just anyone. He's Loki Odinson, God of Mischief, Liesmith, Silvertongue, and he has held not one, but two Infinity Stones without a single burn. And in this hour of need perhaps the most important thing about him is that he is Thor's brother. He is the only family Thor has left, and Thor needs him. So he's not just anyone, and he can do this. Deciding to go for Valkyrie herself, he makes a series of hand gestures and disappears in a flash of green light. It is only in the going that he remembers that he's not an Asgardian; he doesn't know at all if that will affect this very, very Aesir spell.

 

* * *

 

He blinks through a haze of green and stumbles into what, after he's blinked his eyesight back, appears to be some sort of Kronan bar. He takes a small breath so that his lungs can adjust to the atmosphere, accommodating for the finite dust in more copious amounts here than one somewhere like Midgard, which has a similar amount of matter in the air, but it's dead skin instead of rock dust.

"Hey, fearless leader," says a familiar voice, and Loki breathes a sigh of relief. He's made it to the right place. He turns to face Korg, who gives him a small wave when they make eye contact. "'Sup. Thought you were with Thor. Val and Miek are around here, ah, somewhere, right, you remember him, he's got—"

"—scissors for hands, yes." Loki finishes, impatient. "Where is Valkyrie?"

"Around, somewhere. I just said. Yeah?" Korg gestures with a third arm that Loki is sure he didn't have back on Sakaar. Or on the refugee ship, for that matter. 

"You've got an arm, there. It's charming," Loki says, to be polite, while he scans the bar for any sign of a wasteland of glasses.

"Oh, this? Yeah, it's neat, right?" Korg lifts his third arm again. "I'm growing a fourth one, ah, maybe, next week? Not soon enough, balance is all screwy."

Loki's genuinely curious now. "How will you go about that?"

Korg shrugs. It's a weird movement, what with the third shoulder and all. "Rocks."

"Right." Loki takes another look around.

"You weren't blue the last time I saw you, yeah?"

"What?" Loki looks down at his hands and loses his breath at the sight of his Jotun markings. He's hit with a wave of revulsion that has never subsided, not even after all this time. He inwardly reaches for his magic and pulls his Aesir skin back over himself, trying to be grateful that this was the only negative effect of using the Aesir spell. There. Back to normal. "I'm not blue."

"Oh." Korg says, blatantly giving him another once over to double check. "Guess not."

Loki decides to get back to the matter at hand, ignoring the chills up his spine and the creeping self-loathing. "Perhaps while you think through your upcoming arm schedule you could help me find our... dear friend. Valkyrie," he repeats, just in case it had been forgotten already.

"Oh, yeah, sure." Korg turns, neckrocks creaking. "Val! Hey, Val!" It's louder than all the other rabble in the bar, but not loud enough to elicit a response. "Maybe she went outside, to enjoy the sun. Bask, you know. Snakelike. I don't do it like that, myself, since I'm made of rocks. No blood to warm up. Helped a lot back when I was an arena slave, really, like that old, ah, joke, the one, the red shirt. Brown pants. That sort of deal. Though I am wearing brown pants."

Loki tunes him out and pushes past Kronans, slamming open the doors on his way out, perhaps a bit too hard if the cracks in the granite are to go by. He'd overestimated the weight of them and used a bit too much force. The barkeep cries out behind him but he pays it little mind, too distracted by the bright, bright light of Krona's seven suns. 

It's beautiful. He hasn't seen this much light in a long time— not since Asgard, and this far surpasses it. Thor would love it. Thor would love it even more to summon stormclouds and laugh with Loki at the folk scuttling about to hide from the rain— though perhaps not anymore, not since his three day trip to Midgard where he retrieved a conscience. He's no fun anymore. 

_"The sun will shine on us again,"_ Loki had said. Was that the last thing? The last words he'd said directly to his brother? No, no, he'd healed him after, during the Hulk's distraction. But still— something aches in him, as he looks up, up, up. There three red and four white suns, leaving everything tinted the palest pink. Something aches, but the watering in his eyes is only from the brilliance of the light. Only from that. 

"Hey!" 

Loki leans back sharply to dodge the half-full glass that whizzes past him to crash into a dead tree. His head turns toward his assailant just as quickly, but he already knows who it is. "Good to see you, too."

"I hate you, this isn't a good, happy visit." Valkyrie's got a large vase full of a mysterious dark liquid clutched in one hand and Loki wonders why she'd bothered with a glass at all. He wouldn't be surprised if she'd grabbed it from somewhere and filled it just to throw it at him.

"It's not a visit at all." He's suddenly livid. "We were out there fighting for our lives and you're here, basking in the pink sun and _drinking?"_

She's not perturbed one bit. Doesn't even bother taking another swig to make a point; he's that insignificant to her. "I do whatever I want, whenever I want it. I will drink, and I will die, and I am having a great time doing or working towards those things." She gives him a once-over and then narrows her eyes. "What do you mean, fighting for our lives? Let's get a drink."

"I'll just tell you now."

"I'm thirsty."

"You have a drink in your hand right this second."

"I want a different one."

"We don't have time. Thor could be _dying_." He doesn't bother hiding his desperation. He can't, not when it's Thor. Not when it's Thanos. 

_"You must be truly desperate, to come to me for help,"_ he'd said, a lifetime ago, and wonders if he's going to hear a similar sentiment now.

Instead, he gets an apathetic, "Everybody dies. What's more important is you, following me into this bar, and me, drinking. Talk if you want. Die if you want. I don't care." She gives Korg her vase. 

"Hmm, well, you go on, I guess, I'll, ah, I'll go drink this and then put the flowers back in it," Korg says. "You two have fun."

 

* * *

 

"Thanos," Valkyrie says, once Loki has said all that he can say about what happened. "Thanos?"

"Thanos," Loki repeats. 

"Scary reputation."

"He's earned it."

"Well, I'm scarier." Valkyrie says, and stands up. "Come on. This place was boring anyway."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is super short but i felt bad about not updating. next chapter will be longer
> 
> is that bitterness about how fucking awful loki gets treated in mcu as far as his powers go? yes, i am bitter. they literally set him up to have loads of fucking powers and be super strong and then only let him use his daggers. the quality of animation and special effects that dr strange and wanda have, that's what loki is supposed to have. and he's a frost giant with frost giant powers. i'm gonna riot
> 
> i'm making up magic lore on the fly, and sometimes i mix up aesir/asgardian. he says asgardian in the films more but aesir looks prettier. idk what i want, sue me
> 
> I also updated the previous chapter just to fix grammar errors and correct the bit about the reality stone-- loki knows the collector has it, it's not a question, it's a fact.
> 
> see y'all again when i update again


	3. Chapter 3

The Grandmaster's pleasure vessel is a much faster flyer than Loki remembers. 

"I made some upgrades while I was bumming around," Valkyrie half-explains. "You don't spend eons on Sakaar without learning a few things about scrap metal."

"We need to go to Knowhere," Loki says instead of replying.

"Nowhere or Knowhere?"

Loki frowns. "How did you do that out loud?"

She shrugs. 

He moves on. "Knowhere. To the Collector. He has the Reality Stone. We need to destroy it before Thanos can get to it."

She puts the coordinates in the automatic navigator. "How the Hel are we supposed to destroy an Infinity Stone?" 

"Were you even listening to me on Krona?"

"Half-listening. More like a quarter. Maybe. One sixth?"

"I can do it," Loki says. "I can destroy it."

Valkyrie raises an eyebrow. "No offense, but you look like a greased-up weasel that someone left to die six years ago and only just now fished out of a bin somewhere. You really think you can destroy an Infinity Stone?"

"Appearances can be deceiving."

"Not going to elaborate?"

"Not for a third time, no."

"You got a secret weapon, or something?"

"Frigga," Loki sighs, indignation giving way to exhaustion. "She taught me everything I know, until there was nothing left for her to teach. My talent in magic surpassed her. I've held Infinity Stones, I can feel them. One sang to me."

For once, Valkyrie doesn't make a joke. 

"If I pour enough of my energy into one, I might be able to shatter it." Loki doesn't like the look of grief on Valkyrie's face, so he tries to lighten the mood, distract her from the thought of Frigga being dead. "It's that or hit it with a big hammer, and we're a bit short on those lately."

"We could go to Nidavellir," Valkyrie suggests. "Get me a big sword. I can shatter it that way."

"The dwarves don't particularly like me," Loki says, a hand going to his lips, feeling the ghost of threads pulling tightly at his skin. "I don't know what we'd have to trade them anyway. They're very particular about their customers. Besides, we don't need it. I can do it. I just said so, a minute ago—"

"No, I heard you this time. I also heard you said that it sang to you. One of the stones." Her face is unreadable. "You might not be able to follow through. I'll be backup."

Accountability partner, Loki thinks. A Midgardian phrase. He can't remember when he picked it up. Barton, maybe, during the failed Chitauri invasion. Or some other lackey. He wants to say that he doesn't need it, that the Aether didn't tempt him, but he thinks maybe it could. The Tesseract had a great hold on him after Thanos— after he— well. There was a lot. 

"We'll go to Nidavellir," Loki agrees. "We'll get you a sword. But then we go to Knowhere and destroy that damn stone."

 

* * *

 

They get to Nidavellir quickly, but nothing could have prepared them for the sight of the forge gone dark.

"It's never been dark," Valkyrie says, since Loki can't even breathe from the sight of it. "Not ever."

"Thanos," Loki whispers.

"Or time," Valkyrie says, but there's no conviction in it.

They don't even try to land. 

 

* * *

 

"Was Frigga Hela's mother?" Loki asks, on the way to Knowhere.

"No," Valkyrie says, her eyes never leaving the control panel. The automatic navigator remains on, but keeping an eye on things has never been a bad idea. Any small oversight or error will mean that they'll lose time, and Thanos will get to the Infinity Stones first. "Odin's second wife was Hela's mother. Frigga was his third."

Loki closes his eyes, feeling Frigga's hand tucking his hair behind his ear, hearing her whisper some soft chastisement. He half-remembers screaming in his prison cell when he was told of her death, half-remembers reaching out with his magic, heart burning and shuddering as he forced his magic past the prison barrier to reach for her, throat hoarse when he brushed up against her dead magic. 

"How did you know her?"

"Frigga?"

"Yes."

Valkyrie is silent for a moment. She still doesn't turn to look at him. He wonders, for a moment, if she blames him for Frigga's death— everyone else does, or if they don't, they _should_ , because it's his fault for telling the Kursed where to go, it's his fault— but Valkyrie wasn't there for the Dark Elf invasion. What could she know? What could she read on his face, if she bothered to turn his way?

"Frigga was the daughter of a Vanir prince and an Asgardian noblewoman. She never became one of us. But she trained with us, fought with us. She had to prove herself _worthy—_ " she snarls the word— "before Odin could consider her a match. She dined with us, bickered with us. She was good friends with my—" Valkyrie's voice cuts out abruptly.

"With your lover," Loki finishes, and Valkyrie's head turns sharply to him, her face so cold and angry that he thinks she might get up and kill him, mission be damned. 

He thinks of how he used her trauma against her in their fight on Sakaar and doesn't regret it, because she'd have done the same if she could, but he does feel _something_. Not guilt, but his tongue is heavy in his mouth— _Silvertongue turned to lead?_ Volstagg taunts in his head, and what in Hel can he say now— "I'm sorry—" he tries, but she interrupts him.

"Save it."

He takes over the controls wordlessly when she walks away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm hella unreliable on updates but uh thanks for reading, y'all


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